In West Virginia, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in West Virginia averaged 14%.
- That makes West Virginia the 4th hungriest state with a food insecurity rate 34% higher than the national average of 10.4%.
- The official poverty rate (which does not account for income from safety-net and tax-support programs such as SNAP, EITC, and others) in the state averaged 15.0%.
- But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 9.6%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in West Virginia by 36% and the number of people living in poverty by 99,000.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 62,000 people above the poverty line in West Virginia, including 21,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
